Touched in the Head
by Feather Ice
Summary: Merlin was an unusual sort of thief; he stole other people's pain with just a touch of his hand. Not fun, but everything was under control. That is, until he met the boy who just wanted to make it stop hurting.
1. Prologue: He Was a Candle

Warnings: Homosexuality, mentions of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, sexual abuse-just all kinds of abuse, OK-swearing, violence, homelessness, and homelessness. All ye who are not down with that, go away.

Pairings: Chiefly (and only eventually) Merlin x Arthur. Other pairings will develop and be abandoned as needed.

0o0o0

**Prologue: He Was a Candle**

In his hand he holds a candle flame minus its candle, plucked apart with quick fingers because all he wants is the best part, the beautiful arch of severed light. Doing it this way, there's no wax to melt, the wick won't burn—everything will be alright. The flame doesn't need the candle if there's a little magic involved, so he leans against cracked plaster walls, ignores the damp falling through the crumbling roof, and draws dirty knees to his chest.

The fire makes it so it isn't that cold.

The flame flickers as wind blows through the building, whistling angrily. No one would be here if they could help it. This building is condemned and has been for a long time. At any moment that dilapidated roof could collapse, or the floor give out from underneath. But the wind still visits and whistles the tune of old grudges. It is calling a bird to it.

Merlin.

It's his name, whenever there's someone to call it.

But there hasn't been anyone in a long time.

0o0o0

He's sixteen. And he wants a cake.

OK, so it's not his birthday… _probably_. He does remember about birthdays, even if it's been a while since home and parents and—to be honest, walls without _holes_ in them. Birthdays were worth remembering. He remembers a tune (lost the words though; they never made a lot of sense in the first place), sunlight, and wrapping paper stuck to the soles of his feet. And cake. In his memories it was warm, so his birthday probably wasn't in the middle of December, but you know what? He wants a cake for the first time in ages, so today is going to be his birthday whether the calendar likes it or not.

He gets a few stares as he leaves his room. The other tenants, the ones who breathe plumes of cigarette smoke between cracks in the floor and go into fits in between drug highs, all through the night, yowling like cats; they blink at him like he has secrets up his sleeves. Merlin (but not Merlin. Who here knows his name?) stares right back and carefully closes the door to his room. There's no lock, but the door doesn't open once Merlin closes it unless he wants it too. He sees the other squatters shiver.

(It's cold.)

Someone grabs onto his pants leg—"do you have a—can you spare it—please, please—" and Merlin pulls away, letting her fall on the floor. He doesn't service those who kill _themselves_. She convulses, lips flapping soundlessly at the ceiling. But her wings are already broken. She withdraws and Merlin drifts past her, breathing into his hands to warm them against the chill in the air.

No one would be here if they could help it. But they are here nonetheless. When you have nowhere else to go in the dead of a wet English winter, you could do a lot worse than someplace with four walls and a roof, never mind the holes.

Outside, Merlin sticks his head into the path of sunlight, which hits him like a slap. Its heat is unexpected and forceful. Merlin exhales a plume of foggy breath upwards and there's a cloud that looks like a dragon. There always is. Merlin salutes it solemnly. Its wet snout points down Asher Street, so that's where Merlin goes. He lets his feet hash it out about where he's headed. He feels sorry for them, his feet. They're wet and cold in spite of the layers of socks he uses to keep warm. Socks soak up ditch water and sludge until the bite of cold is up to his calves. His shoes aren't worth mentioning.

Merlin is slightly convinced the dragon is trying to kill him. Then again, sometimes he gets paranoid from all the smoke the other tenants send billowing up into his room.

He winds up on a busy city street, which makes his mouth twist—he definitely doesn't like this; doesn't like everyone so packed close, so loud, so eager to push and shove and _feel_—but his chest aches with anticipation. Not time yet, no; wait. Gritting his teeth, he huddles against a lamppost, but it doesn't offer much of a barrier. Every new body hits him like a crashing ocean wave, dragging him under. Like one bullet after the next.

Merlin's breath begins to come in short, shallow gasps. He sinks to the ground, pulling his knees in tight. He buries his face in his arms, making himself an egg not yet hatched. Nothing can touch him, not really. If the back of his neck feels cold and exposed, it's his imagination. He's waiting. Waiting bites.

When he feels it, it makes him gasp in a breath in earnest. It's cold outside the shelter of his arms—he's lifted his head, feeling _now_ reaching through his ribcage and gripping his heart. They're on the other side of the road—typical—and smiling, chatting. The girl isn't one of the ones that makes Merlin cringe with Backwards Feeling. The other one though? His smile makes Merlin taste the burn of alcohol in the back of his throat, makes him flinch away from the impact of a phantom hand on his skin.

There's no name, but their rarely is. The light changes and when Merlin sees that the man is flirting with the girl, making her reel away and giggle, he scurries across the asphalt amid the crush of a thousand jacketed, shuffling bodies. The couple still hasn't noticed it's their turn to cross the street (_maybe that's the problem_, Merlin thinks, annoyed). His left hand twists the knife in his pocket and he reaches out, colliding with the man.

"Whoa, mate!" Hands on Merlin's shoulders, steering him away, and Merlin shudders, hiding his grimace with a duck of his head. He pretends to lose his footing again, knocking into the girl, who yelps and shoves him off, which feels better. Harder. More real. He lands on the concrete and stares up, dazed, as the man swears and hauls him back up. "Are you drunk or what?" He asks, and Merlin nods wordlessly, trying to find space in the crowd to back away, but instead the man's hands are buffeting earth-stained snow from his clothes. The man frowns at him. "You look like shit. Do you need to see a doctor?"

"Hey, let's go," the girl hisses, tugging on the man's arm, trying to separate the two of them. She throws Merlin a crinkle-browed look from the corner of his eye. "_Leave_ it. He's just some stoner."

_Cake_, Merlin reminds himself as the man's hands make their final sweep across his clothes. He's being frowned at, faced with that tilted head that tries to hypnotize eyes to meet. He's not a bloody snake; it doesn't work. His eyes stay fixed firmly on his feet. _Lots of cake. And candle flame without the candles._

The man frowns, and Merlin curses internally when he realizes that somehow their eyes have met. "…Hang on. Don't I know you?"

Merlin shakes his head wordlessly and the girl huffs. Pretty girls can make their breathing sound like a threat—this one is informing the man that he will never be spoken to again if he doesn't start paying attention right this minute. "_Gwaine!_"

_Is that his name?_ Merlin has the presence of mind to wonder as the man heeds her warning. The pair of lovers (what else could they be with the menacing breathing and the way he offers his arm) dash onto the icy road. The light is about to change and they're not on the crosswalk—Merlin hears the blare of a horn and the girl slips in her haste to get away. A tire screeches and—

Everyone is shouting now, fighting forward to get a clearer look. It's Christmastime and the whole block is an uproar of vultures. Merlin melts with practiced ease into the background. He needs to breathe and is unable to remember how that works. He blinks instead. His vision fractures into camera shutter images.

Shoulders jostling. Someone's shopping bag swinging at his face (_duck_). Gray sky, dragon cloud. Asphalt—gray too. A different, darker gray. The lovers have been thrown several feet back from the car that hit them. Merlin's hands, the gloves on them. They have no fingers. Every time Merlin nicks himself a new pair, he always cuts the fingers out. It's a compulsion. OCD. No choice.

Merlin's bare fingers burn from the touch of skin, a static sensation practiced at drawing shudders out of him. He drops back against the brick wall of some building because his legs are about to give out. He lets himself slide down for a moment, trying to feel the rough scrape of brick, the cold sting of sludge melting through his pants leg—trying to stay in his own skin.

When the pain really hits him, it's like standing on the tracks in the metro. He can see it coming, and then—heavy, jarring impact, air knocked out of him. His head snaps back, he's rocked off of his feet. He feels his bones snapping apart like Legos with nerves, feels himself being deconstructed by force and metal. Burned rubber assaults his nose and he feels himself rupturing inside—

And then it's over.

Merlin gasps in the air he needs, surfacing from the dark, disconnected pain. It ebbs slowly, leaving him whimpering into the ground—he's toppled over and half his face is numb with cold. But it's his own skin again, his own bones. His blood evaporates from the snow in sanguine wisps and his leg jerks back into a natural position as the bones mend themselves.

He breathes. When he can stand, he does that too.

And then he steals a cake from the bakery two blocks down because he needs a reason to be out that isn't **this**.

0o0o0

It wasn't a very good cake. That street needs a better bakery.

Merlin is juggling candle flame now, idly, rolling it off his fingers and along his nose. It rolls like a unicycle on a tightrope in some grand, empty circus. Merlin still feels a bit uncomfortable. Sure, he's warm. But he can't shake the feeling that there's one flame he's missing, one flame that even still and solitary will keep him warm and entertained.

He dreams of such a thing sometimes, usually after he's had a bad episode.

It's only the _first_ time that requires skin contact. Some go away after that, like that girl (_pretty, blonde, Gwaine's_). But the others, the ones with so much Backwards Feeling that Merlin feels like he's being extracted from his own skin like some rare strain of disease to be bred and confined—they stay with him. If he doesn't shut them out brick by mental brick, he can feel them, echoing his heartbeat. If he focuses on them, his eyes roll back in his head for hours and he lives a television program where he has another name and another face and this whole other life that doesn't make sense because Merlin ran away from home when he was fourteen and university and jobs and family mean nothing to him.

So it can have him any time, can't it, the Backwards Feeling? The collection of souls he's touched and made a part of himself. Them and their unique sensation that there's nothing in him except for those other people. The feeling that the only place Merlin exists in is outside of himself, where he isn't. That inside is hollow.

Backwards Feeling indeed.

Sometimes, after that first skin contact, he can fight it. When the Backwards Feeling sweeps over him while he's sitting in his room and demands he hurt, he can deny it that. If it's something little—a burned thumb, a stubbed toe—Merlin can fight it with deep breaths and clenched fists. If it's not, he falls on the floor and convulses. Depending on what it is, he bleeds. His flesh blisters. He has a heart attack. Once, notably, he's even drowned.

Merlin once wonders if there's a place where they buy him; some greasy underground tunnel where some toothless salesperson leers. _Get your mutant teenage runaway here, folks! Take him for a spin—whatever injury you suffer, he'll suffer in your place! You'll survive to throw yourself off a cliff as many times as you fancy. And he can be all yours for just fourteen ninety five plus tax and shipping!_

(Merlin sincerely doubts that he would be expensive.)

He hates it. Touch pretends to be something nice and good—warm—safe—and it's _not_. It lies, it throws him off-guard, and he's never really prepared for the way pain rips at him just long enough to cough blood up in someone else's place. He hates it. He hates the way he never dies from it.

He's lost count of how many people have the Merlin Insurance Policy. Their numbers are always on the rise. Sooner or later he'll be called again by the awful ringing in his ears, telling him to go, go now, before someone dies. Go sit and wait for someone to come so you can touch them and save them. Go make up an excuse about cakes or new socks so that you feel like you've got the tiniest amount of control over your shit life.

At midnight, the flames vanish and the circus ends. This is because Merlin topples to the floor of his room and has another man's stroke. His nails dig gouges in the floors and fill his fingertips with splinters. Somewhere in the world, someone Merlin doesn't know is still alive.

Merlin curls up under his extra jacket and goes to bed early. His stomach hurts. Damn cake.

0o0o0

A/N: ...I don't think I'm capable of writing happy things anymore. Anyway. I am writing again, so there's that. I don't want Merlin to be over. Ever. Anyway, there's another long storyline planned out for this one. I hope to actually get it out this time. For those who read all the way to the end, thank you very much! I hope you will continue to read my (horrid) writing.


	2. Chapter One: Splinters and Galaxies

**Warnings**: Homelessness, mentions of violence, poor bedside manners, and foul language (this story has pleeenty of that). Angst. My Terrible Writing. Please enjoy.

0o0o0

**Chapter One: Splinters and Galaxies**

He's reasonably sure his finger is infected.

It's swollen. And hurts. _Oozing_.

Merlin is a teenager. The pain fails to prevent him from prodding at it.

You'd think that being a life insurance policy for what feels like half the damn country would earn Merlin the ability to heal his own injuries. You'd _think_ that.

"Fuck," Merlin grumbles, stuffing the offending hand into its glove. Wrong glove. The ache makes Merlin swear again, fumbling to get it out. It now feels like something is drumming on the inside of his skin. Merlin forgoes the gloves. Maybe the cold is good for infections. He leaves his room scowling at everyone because he hates the hospital so, _so_ much.

If you still need reasons at this point (although frankly Merlin believes he no longer has to justify why he hates everything):

1) The smell reminds him of his Dad and makes him sick,

2) He always gets roped into one of those welfare programs where they want to sit and talk to him real sweet and slow, making him about vibrate out of his skin over the threat of a touch. The hospital staff hasn't stopped patronizing him since he was a child,

3) And he never gets what he comes for.

Merlin has been relegated to one of the white plastic chairs in the waiting area, where he's staring around nervously enough that the respectable elements of society have migrated to the far side of the room. The guy who is as obviously here for the free clinic as Merlin is—his clothes look like they've been chewed on by rats and soap is probably something he hasn't touched in a decade—appears to be debating the merits of shanking Merlin to rifle through his pockets for whatever drugs he's on. Merlin fingers the knife in his own pocket and eyes him right back. All the while the receptionist flips her magazine and stays totally oblivious.

"Stone?" Merlin glances up, trying not to twitch too obviously. "_Merlin_ Stone?"

Ironically, the part of his name that isn't made up is what makes the nurse purse her lips.

The first time Merlin came to the clinic (with a three day-old broken wrist; they had to break it again; they seemed troubled that all this got out of Merlin was a wrinkled nose and a hiss), they issued him a card. It had to have things like his name and birth date on it. Merlin lied about all the information on there, except his name. It felt unexpectedly good to have someone calling it again, out loud.

This nurse has a face that makes her seem like she should be haloed in flowers and eyes that twinkle. She's one of his insurance patients. Merlin is rocked with the intensity of Backwards Feeling, but has no compulsion to touch her. Her life is not in danger right now.

"Hello, Merlin," she says. She smiles at him like his being twitchy does not immediately make her believe he's armed (_she commutes to this side of town_, Merlin decides) and asks, "What seems to be the matter?"

Merlin flinches away from her hand and watches it lower to her side before his eyes flick back up. She smiles patiently. "Hand hurts," he finally mutters. "Think it's infected. Don't want my fingers to fall off."

She gestures him down the halls and Merlin carefully weaves his way through the sea of patients. Eyes follow him as he passes; curious eyes, suspicious eyes. People reach out and Merlin dances around them. Free clinics are always crowded. And no one is ever well.

At least there are no crises until he makes it to a part of the hallway where there's a big cluster—looks like a family—and their feet are tangled together like roots, sealing the passage. He watches as the nurse gently brushes their feet aside and darts forward—they knot themselves up again. There's a challenge in their eyes. They're all looking at him—the man with the withered arm, the woman with her swollen, sagging belly, the child with eyes that are a little too glazed. The nurse looks back too. She frowns.

"Merlin?"

He swallows, throat gone horribly dry. The child's hand rises, reaching for a tattered pant leg. Merlin skitters back, collides with something that grunts, feels the tingling shoot through his neck, fierce and itchy. He lurches away as the man behind him bursts into a racking, horrific cough, a filthy scrap of cloth pressed to his lips, and it's too late.

Merlin panics, which is how things go from bad to worse.

He blunders forward, battering his way through the gate of flesh barring his way, heedless of the fresh electricity that sinks in. He wants a door to keep people out like a junkie needs a fix—he flies into the first empty exam room, past the nurse's open-mouthed stare. Crashes hard into the cabinets, gripping his own shoulders like if he can hold on tightly enough, Merlin can keep his body under control. And then he can't breathe because his lungs are heavy with fluid and blood—next, there's cancer, there's sickness, there's something as pathetic as a cold that he just can't defend against right now, not when he's in the middle of a fit on the clinic room floor.

When he's breathing again, the room swims back into focus. He realizes that the nurse is holding him down. She's stronger than she looks. Maybe stronger than him.

His thoughts are fuzzy, knocking around uselessly in his skull. Oxygen deprivation. His tongue feels like it's been replaced with a block of wood.

"Hand hurts," Merlin wearily attempts, but she's whispering something about just holding on and waiting because the doctor will be here any minute. Merlin's card said something about a history of epileptic fits.

It's not epilepsy. But Merlin is going to be restrained by more people, he's going to take their pain again, and he's going to go through a parade of episodes all because he didn't want his damn finger to fall off. Which, by the way, was probably brought on by another episode anyway. Splinter.

Fucking hospital.

The second time he comes around, he's restrained in a bed. He has an IV.

He lifts his head to glance at his hand and it's still swollen and oozing.

Fucking fuck everything.

The bed knocks him out.

0o0o0

"Merlin?"

...Is that his name?

"Gnahh," Merlin confirms. Whatever is in that IV has completely broken his brain. That's new. Usually he only feels slightly fucked up. Right now the ceiling is… Drumming.

He's in a human heart. It's probably touching him, and he'll have to heal his own presence.

That… thought makes his head hurt.

Merlin turns his eyes to the left and thank God, no one is touching him. The doctor is giving Merlin a look that Merlin finds difficult to identify in the context of 'hospital' and 'constant patronization.' After a moment's staring, he realizes that he's being glowered at.

The doctor growls at his clipboard: "Name."

"Merlin?" Merlin's voice is slurred. Didn't he just answer that question? The walls are still pumping blood through the building, distracting him with rhythmic _swish-_thumps.

"Date of birth."

Merlin giggles. Weird question. Who would throw him a party? "Dunno."

The doctor growls something under his breath that sounds like "oh my _god."_ Merlin feels the need to add, "Made up whatever's on the card. Can't remember."

The doctor pauses at that. "Memory loss wasn't listed…"

On what, the giant list of pathologies floating over Merlin's head? Merlin snorts. "Look, I just wanted my finger fixed." This gets him a very blank look. Merlin tries to explain his predicament by waggling his restrained hand. The doctor looks at it and then back to him. "Infected," Merlin grinds out. "Finger. Fix please."

After a moment, he adds, "And I'm about to... sprout wings out of my ears. No IV."

The doctor (his name tag reads 'Doctor Lance') lowers his clipboard. "Those _are_ the only prescription drugs you'll be getting."

Merlin grimaces at the implication that he's here to get high. "Take it. _Out_."

His brain switches back on half a second too late. _Of course_. Merlin's throat clogs and all he can produce is a thin croak, cringing away from the touch and its pain, ready to take him over like a parasite—

"There," Lance is dabbing at Merlin's arm with something that smells of antiseptic. "It's out. Don't be such a girl."

Merlin's heart stops a little. Up close, Lance's eyes are too blue to be real. Merlin stares at them and watches galaxies expand beyond the bounds of human perception. His mouth hangs open. He can feel the hand on his skin and _nothing is tingling_.

Lance recoils. "You're drooling."

He proceeds to undo one of Merlin's wrist restraints and hand him a tissue, presumably to correct this problem. Merlin doubts that this is appropriate hospital protocol. He takes the tissue numbly, and doesn't move. His arm doesn't feel like part of him. Tears are welling treacherously in his eyes.

As Merlin bites back a sob, Lance asks, "Now you're going to answer some questions, aren't you?"

Anything to keep him from crying. Merlin nods.

"What anti-epileptic are you on?"

Anger swells up too fast to control. Merlin groans. "No, nothing!" His emotions are shifting too fast, are too vivid in the forefront of his mind. He can taste them. Anger is making the air in the room shake like jello. "I'm not an epileptic!"

"Right. Of course you're not." Lance heaves a frustrated sigh and returns his attention to the clipboard. "So you've not been taking your medication, is it?"

"I'm not taking my medication because it doesn't exist," Merlin replies bitterly. "Because, I don't know, _I'm not an epileptic_."

Lance holds his gaze. Merlin's brain wants to expand them into star systems again. Lance takes a deep, God Help Me sort of breath. "Explain the seizures," he says.

Merlin swallows. _Yeah, Merlin. _"As long as no one touches me," he says after a moment's struggle, "I'll be fine. It's like—like a panic attack."

"So what do you take for **that**?"

Merlin hasn't deal with this level of persistence since he was fourteen and inherently pitiful-looking. He wants to be ill.

The walls haven't quite stopped vibrating, but Merlin figures stumbling back to his room won't be any more dangerous than being locked up in here with Doctor Lance and his clipboard of doom. "I'm feeling so much better," he gushes, putting on the best smile he can muster. "Amazing. Full recovery. Can I go? I promise I'll never be a menace to society again."

Lance smiles sweetly. It looks _terrifying_.

"Sure! Just let me get some tests out of the way."

Merlin leaves the hospital short about a pint of blood and still slightly loopy from the IV. His knife is gone, which sucks (it was probably confiscated). And he was forced to take a box of both epilepsy pills and something that is probably for panic attacks.

Merlin hurls them both off the nearest bridge. Watching the medication sink below the surface makes him feel loads better about life.

He makes it back to his room without getting stabbed and he plays with the candles until he falls asleep to the sound of someone screaming in the room above. They're either dying, hallucinating, or having sex. Whatever it is, they sound miserable.

Join the club.

0o0o0

**A/N**: Oh God, this chapter was so, SO crap. It probably still is, right? I desperately hope the next one will be better, so bear with me here, guys. Or, on the off-chance that I've edited myself into a vaguely comatose state, let me know that I'm neurotic and this chapter is fine. Cause man, that would make me hate my life less! Anyway. Sorry it took so long to get this up. You are all patient and lovely and I swear I'm not dead. Also, if you have any suggestions or critiques, I will love you forever.

So, who thinks they know who 'Doctor Lance' was? Cause it's so hard to guess and all.


End file.
